


Tiny Tumblrfics

by Odamaki



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Autumn, Baby Animals, Class System, Dorks, First Meetings, Friendship/Love, Geese, Gen, Holmes Brothers, Jealous John, Kidlock, M/M, Morning Cuddles, Sickfic, Telepathy, hangovers, kid!Sherlock, kid!mycroft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-10-31 09:18:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 11
Words: 9,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10896330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Odamaki/pseuds/Odamaki
Summary: Collection of random prompts filled on Tumblr. Some are very short. See chapters for notes on contents.





	1. After the Wedding

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picture Prompt  
> Molly and Lestrade after the wedding.

**After the Wedding**

  

She’d told Tom to go home. There hadn’t been an argument, he hadn’t done anything specifically wrong, it was simply that at some point during the evening, she’d looked at him and realised that she simply didn’t want him there. He’d looked back at her and known it.

He’d blustered something about the B&B, and then left, and while he might have gone there, he could equally have just gone back to the city and Molly didn’t care to go and find out. Either she’d have walked in and he’d have been in the room, unwanted, or she’d have had to have faced the stark reality of cold, bleached sheets alone.

She’d stayed instead, steadily finishing the wine that Mary wasn’t drinking and wishing she’d seen Sherlock leave, so she could know with certainty if it was just the fact that he disliked parties, or if John’s happiness had broken him. He wouldn’t have told her either way, but she’d have been able to guess if she’d gotten a look at his face, poor soul.

After the DJ had packed up and the lights come on, the crowd had gone out to the road to look for transport back to wherever, and Molly, in someone else’s coat, had slipped away.

Not wise, wandering drunk in the dark by yourself, but it was dead quiet and the wine made it seem poetic. The gate to the church was locked but around the side there was a gap in the hedge where the grass clippings can be wheeled out and tired women can drift in.

She feels at ease amongst the dead; they are her silent coworkers and they have, at least, the dignity not to make untoward comments about her. The names blur together; from Agnes Uttley Beloved Mother to Thomas Stevens, 1945-1966, to the sad ones covered in plastic pinwheels and fresh grief.

She chooses one, reads the name with her fingers and then takes a seat beside it, on the pedestal, her back to the long firm spear of the cross. It’s cold, but she doesn’t feel it much. She works in the cold. This is nothing.

It’s quiet. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.

She remembers the heat of the sun in the morning, creeping through the wrong coat and the chill in her limbs. She remembers the sun in her eyes and the pins and needles in her thigh and not particularly caring. She remembers the creak and then clatter of the gate.

“Ow, bollocks-”

Molly squeezes her eyes shut tighter and then dares to open one a fraction. There’s a figure at the other end of the path, obscured by the sunshine behind him to just a silhouette, but a familiar one. Internally, Molly sighs. She doesn’t want to answer questions; she doesn’t want a lecture about acting so irresponsibly.

He staggers up, rubbing at an inner thigh that he’s pronged on the bars of the gate climbing over it. The suit, never pristine to start with, is rumpled and he’s lost his tie.

“Mols,” he says, sounding lost. She purses her lips in a silent ‘shh’, because the sunshine is pleasant on the scalp, but sound is not. She’s got an awful hangover.

He stumbles and drops himself on to the grass next to her, panting slightly. He opens his mouth (or at least she hears the intake of breath) but then he doesn’t say anything. They sit in silence, soaking up the sun, and then the pins and needles creep into Molly’s buttock and she has to move at last, stretching stiffly.

He’s sat with both legs stretched out like a toddler, dark circles smeared under his eyes from too much booze and too much time awake. Molly rubs the grit from her eyes and suspects she looks much the same. They share a mutual look, and Lestrade might not be the smartest man, but he knows what he’s looking at nonetheless. “C’mere,” he says, holding an arm up.

Her eyes feel hot and prickly, but she’s too worn out to cry. Lestrade smells of- well, he smells, but she doesn’t move away. He lets her slump against his side, and squeezes her closer. “You’re alright,” he says, like he thinks it’s true. Molly rubs her bare fingers together in her lap. “You’re well shot of him.”

Molly just makes a noise of unhappiness, not because she disagrees, but because it’s exhausting, and she’s fed up of how much hard work finding joy is. Lestrade understands it all too well. He squints, the side of his jaw rough with stubble that he scratches at.

“I want a fried egg,” Molly says finally, her voice raw. “And a cup of tea. And a wee.”

She feels his body shake with a silent laugh. She twists her lips and is glad of him. Slowly, creaking, they get to their feet. She shows him the hole in the hedge. He complains.

He holds her hand all the way back to reality.


	2. Nosing About

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Promptfic:
> 
>  _girlwhowearsglasses:_  
>  I need all the fics of Sherlock kissing the back of John’s neck and I need them now.
> 
> Johnlock, obviously.

“You’ve got a thing for that,” John mutters, face squashed into the pillows and half-asleep still. Sherlock grunts a question, still sliding the tip of his nose down the side of John’s throat. 

“My neck,” John clarifies. He rolls over, dislodging Sherlock momentarily, but the man finds the soft spot just under his ear and begins that slow downwards trail again. John sighs. “If I start getting cravings for moonlit nights and a fear of garlic, I’ll know who to blame.” 

Sherlock pulls back and looks at him, affronted. 

“Oh go back to sleep,” he huffs. 

John snickers, thieves a kiss from his mouth and burrows back into Sherlock’s side of the bed. “I prefer you to that bloody alarm by a long shot,” he tells him. 

Sherlock grumbles, wriggling a leg in between John’s, a warm, heavy weight down John’s side. He sighs across John’s scalp and the room goes quiet. 

“S’cold,” John says, muffled. He scoots up and back against Sherlock’s chest. “Might wear that polo neck.” 

“I hate that jumper. It makes you look like… an unfinished sausage.” 

“I know.” John stifles a yawn and squints at his watch. He rolls back slightly and grins at Sherlock, upside down. “Does mean you can whatever you like to my neck before I have to get up for work though.” 

Sherlock gives him a measured look. “Hm,” he comments, sliding out of John’s field of vision to nip at a vertebrae. He pauses, and then chuckles darkly on a thought. 

“What’ll the rest of you be wearing?”


	3. The Unfinished Uni AU

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Mystrade in thirty different AU settings:**
> 
>  
> 
> [21/30] Roommates AU  
> Though very different in almost every way possible, Mycroft Holmes and Greg Lestrade are both considered the absolute worst roommates on campus. When they’re assigned a room together the bets on who will quit first start almost immadiately.

** The Unfinished Uni AU **

“God, you look cheerful. What’s happened?” Sally swings her heels on the coffee table as Anderson bustles into the common room, his face split from ear to ear in a grin.

“I am cheerful,” he reports. “I am over the bloody moon. Look at this!”

“Is that the ballots?” Sally plucks her cigarette from her mouth and sticks out a hand for the papers, frowning at them briefly before her eyebrows shoot up. “I’m in with some medical undergrad? Bernie- who?”

“Yes, yes, no idea, but loooook!” Anderson insists, all but vibrating into her lap to stab his finger on the paper next to his own name. “Bliss! Eden! Open wide those pearly gates and let me in! I’m not stuck with Holmes any more!”

“No! Who’s Mike Stamford?”

“That quiet little chap shaped like a pumpkin.”

“Oh, fantastic, Phil!” Sally replies, giving him a friendly squash. “Does that mean I can smoke in your room?”

“It means,” Anderson says, in raptures, swiping back the list and clutching it to his chest. “No more post it notes on my prep books. No more German opera. No more whirring dehumidifier. No more Mummy. No more schedules. No more Holmes…I’m so happy.”

“You’re too happy,” Sally warns, amused. She ruffles his hair, aware that Anderson has passed a hell of a year as Holmes’ roommate. After all, he’d spent more time in her room than his own. The boy’d only been going back to his room to pick up books and pass out asleep. “Who’s Dimmock got?”

“Edwards, from English Lit. Best thing though, guess who Holmes has got.”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“I dunno. You know I ignore most of the blokes around here. Um… Welshie Davis?”

“No. Try again.”

“Rugby Ben?”

“Nope. Right lines though; think more roughty-toughty.”

“More roughty-toughty than Rugger bugger Ben? Watson?”

“Hah!” Anderson explodes, “I’d pay for that to happen! No. Better. I’m talking motorbike oil on the sheets, and Mr ‘THIS pot noodle is pot noodle but THIS pot noodle is actually toenails’.”

“Lestrade!?”

Anderson flips the paper around and shows her the reverse of the list. There it is in black and white. Lestrade, Gregory - Holmes, Mycroft: Room 242.

“Have they seen yet?” Sally says, lit up with the promise of the inevitable fall out of this. “I’m so glad we have housing ballots. Thank you God, for making my life complete. Oh my God, Phillip, they’re going to kill each other. Poor old Gregs. He won’t know what hit him.”

“I know,” Phillips replies, happily. “It’s going to be brilliant. I can’t wait to see Holmes’ head explode.”

“It won’t last,” Sally says pragmatically, putting out her cigarette in the damp base of her coffee cup. “One or the other will move out. Holmes probably. He can afford to.”

“You are forgetting Mummy dearest,” Anderson says, staring at the ceiling. “Holmes is only in the student dorms because Mummy says so, and Greg’s broke so…basically Greg’s doomed. Holmes’ll break him.”

“Well,” Sally replies, examining the paper again. “Then let’s call it a hundred quid shall we? I bet Holmes’ll crack first. He’s too clean. I’ve had to enter Lestrade’s room on a Sunday morning. There was cheese on the window and you could cut the air with a knife.”

Anderson, not about to reveal in detail the depths of leverage that Mycroft had managed to unearth over him, shakes his head. “Holmes’ll get his way,” he says, “But I’m game. Hundred quid, Greg moves out before the end of term.”

“Deal,” Sally says, pumping his hand. “And if no one moves out, fifty quid each has to go in the pot for the charity.”

“Won’t happen, but fine. You’re on.”

Sally laughs. “Holmes and Greg in one room. Come on,” she says, bouncing upright off of the sofa and stretching. “I want to see their faces when they realise they’re roommates!”

___


	4. Merry Christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock are gross. UuU

**Merry Christmas**

“You’re drunk.”

“I might be,” John admits, sinking heavily into the empty seat on the sofa, palms first. “A bit.”

Sherlock is a sprawl of cat-like indulgence, pot-bellied from a disgustingly huge dinner by anyone’s standards. John groans and stretches his legs out, then hiccups. He turns his head, propping his chin on his own shoulder and his face sags out in all directions in a dopey smile.

“Hullo you.”

“Hello.”

“I’m too full, ‘xcuse me-” He lifts his hips long enough from the sofa cushion to pop the taut button on his jeans and then melts back with a sigh.

“Obscene,” Sherlock comments.

“Be kind,” John begs. “I’m ill.”

“It’s self-inflicted.”

“It’s Christmas,” John argues, blinking sleepily. The fairy lights on the lopsided tree wink at them, lulling them both into a brandy-soaked trance. The sofa warms from the weight of their bodies. Sherlock yawns, flexing his belly to try and relieve the drum-like feeling, and then catches them both by surprise with a rigorous fart.

John looses it at once. “Blimming hell,” he complains, wedging a cushion against as much of Sherlock’s bum as can be reached. Laughing, however, has a relaxing effect that makes him let rip a bass note of his own, and then they’re lost in a ridiculous cycle of farting and laughing and squabbling.

“Clench! Clench! Don’t you dare!” John says, breathless, tears in his eyes. Sherlock grits his teeth in pantomime effort and the resulting balloon-like squeak makes John throw his head back and roar, hands clasping his belly, shaking with laughter.

Sherlock’s abashed and boyishly delighted all at the same time. “If I knew that’s all it took,” he begins, a twinkle in his eye mixed with awkward shyness.

“You’re a terror,” John says. He blinks, stupid with over-eating and laughing so hard, and utterly open. He props his feet up next to Sherlock’s on the coffee table, amongst the wreckage of Christmas morning. Within a few minutes, he’s going to doze off, and it’s going to be one of those hateful, typical Christmases with everyone sat around watching crap telly and wearing stupid paper crowns.

Sherlock rubs at the back of his head. Strange to say, but he’d almost enjoyed the meal, and he could almost do with a kip. John’s already nodding, chin tucked up in folds above the collar of his repugnant jumper and there’s a dozen things Sherlock could do in the meanwhile.

But the sofa seems to have glued him in, and it’s too much effort to shake himself free. He pushes John’s chocolate orange aside with his heel and tucks his own chins up, hands on his chest, satisfied and sluggish. Slowly he lets gravity do his dirty work for him, leaning till he’s resting at least half his weight on John, who returns the favour.

Presently, John burps under his breath.

“Disgusting,” Sherlock thinks, and uses him as a cushion anyway.


	5. Molly, Anyone.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _PROMPT #172 (Sherlock Kink Meme)_  
>  BBC, Molly/Anyone
> 
> _Anyone/Molly: hurt/comfort, Molly has the flu (or worse, if you like) ___
> 
> _Wiggins is a good friend._  
> 

**Molly, Anyone**

“Out.”

Wiggins leans all his weight on the door, which does not stop it from trying to close on him but does inform him exactly how slippery the floor is.

“I’m invited,” he says through the narrowing gap, trainers squealing, “I’m here to see Molly Hooper.”

“She’s not in,” the mortician says.

“What?! But it’s Monday! Monday’s Molly’s day. It’s alliterative.”

“Well, not this Monday. She’s called in sick.”

“How sick?”

“Do I look like her PA? How should I know?” The mortician pushes harder on Billy’s scant weight.

“Oh.” Wiggins stops leaning on the door, which then ricochets. “Can I still see the corpses for a bit?” he asks the mortician on the floor.

The answer is decidedly not in his favour.

—

Someone has glued their finger to the doorbell. Molly knows this because it is ringing like a drill going through the top of her skull and she is inconveniently pinned to the sofa by a combination of cat, duvet and influenza.

“Stop,” she whimpers, dislodging cat and duvet in one and struggling to the door. She fumbles it open, mole-ish in the bright light of the outside world and stares at Wiggins in blank confusion.

Wiggins stares back. “Eurgh,” he summarises of the state of her.

“Thanks,” Molly says. Wiggins holds up a bright orange carrier bag.

“Can I put this in your fridge?”

“Is it food?”

“Some is not food, but that is because it is drink,” Wiggins explains. Molly sighs and steps back to allow him in.

“Now’s not really a good time…”

Toby pours off the sofa and tarts around Wiggins’ feet, leaving Molly to slump disconsolate back onto the sofa in her duvet nest, which is shamefully littered with soggy tissues and crumbs and dvd cases of terrible slushy movies about women who are inconvenienced by one or two men until they find a third, better one.

Wiggins putters around the kitchen with Toby around his neck like a glamorous stole, putting things in Molly’s fridge. Molly hasn’t the energy to see what he’s doing, and even less energy to care. She just wants the world to go dark and quiet until the horrors in her sinuses abate.

“Have you had any water?”

Molly stirs from the pile long enough to make a sad noise and paw at the remote. Wiggins comes back with a glass which he plonks within her reach. He moves the box of kleenex nearer to her trailing hand, sits on the floor and obligingly finds the play button for her. She’d like to blub, but her nose is already running fit to drown her. Wiggins leans his head back on the cushions by her elbow. “Can I make a cuppa tea?”

“Please.”

She manages to sit up and take the steaming mug when he comes back, and he squishes into the empty bit of sofa by her feet with the cat.

“I feel like crap,” Molly says, slightly jealous of Toby’s unfaithfulness.

“Should I call the Doc?”

“No, I’m the doctor,” she argues, annoyed because it could be a stronger argument if she wasn’t wearing a nightie covered in holographic stars, and if she hadn’t pulled her fluffy blanket up around her ears. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not,” Wiggins says, grinning. He nods to the TV “Look, she’s going to ditch him at the alter.”

“Good, he’s a dick.”

Molly watches the film unfold, and drowses. Wiggins sits so still she almost forgets he’s there, except for the slow back and forth movement of his hand on Toby’s head. Somehow by the time the film ends, he has managed to find room on his skinny lap for both an obese feline and Molly’s feet.

“Did you go to Barts?”

“Yeah.”

“They kick you out?”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” Wiggins says, and his hand slips a moment from Toby’s head to her ankle, just a quick squeeze. “This is fun too. Being ill’s fucking awful on your own.”

‘Oh,’ Molly thinks, wiping her nose. “Oh,” she says aloud, and the hand pats the arch of her foot- not intrusive, not being untoward, just friendly. A friend. Because being ill on your own is awful. She lowers the kleenex into her lap.

“Thanks for coming. And making me tea. And watching crap with me.”

“Any time.”

“Do you want to stay for a bit? You’ve not got to be somewhere… like dinner?”

“Dunno, I could stay. What you cooking?”

“Uh…”

He laughs, face curled up like a cabbage leaf, almost silently. “Just kidding, i shoved a couple of microwaves in your fridge. We can eat later,” he adds, seeing her struggle at the idea of food. “You want to watch this vampire bollocks?”

“Yeah,” Molly says, slumping back into the duvet and pushing her feet further under his hands, soles against Toby’s furry back. “Yeah, fuck it. Find the one where he eats her shitty date. You’ll hate him, he’s a twat.”

“Nice,” Wiggins approves, and puts his feet up as well.

Molly sips at her lukewarm tea and her head still hurts and her nose is still streaming and she still feels sick at the idea of so much as a cracker, but all in all, she reckons, she feels better.


	6. Less Than Grand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _PROMPT #127_  
>  BBC, Sherlock, Any pairing 
> 
>  
> 
> _BBC sherlock, AU, Any pairings_  
>  I think i saw this prompt ages ago on the old LJ kinkmeme but it never got filled. When john thinks of sherlock as a ‘posh boy’ he’s wrong, Sherlock and Mycroft didn’t grow up rich, the way they talk/dress is just an affectation they put on mostly as a way for mycroft to get to where he is/ give an air of superiority/idk anything else you can think of and they actually grew up poor/common. __
> 
> _  
> _Kidlock_  
>  _

**Less Than Grand**

The building was big and old and grand and rotting. They had lived their all their lives, and felt an ownership of it in their hearts, despite the fact that it was not theirs and never would be.

The upper floors were locked, the furniture covered, and all they had were the grounds and the shambles of the servant’s rooms. Hard to believe such a place existed, untouched practically since victorian times. Hard to believe anyone would own it, pack up and go abroad and never think to ask who’d moved in during their absence. In all this they thrived.

William pushes matchsticks across the scarred kitchen table and sulks, swinging his legs. “I don’t want beans for tea,” he complains. “It’s always beans. I want chicken nuggets.”

“There aren’t any,”

“When’s mam coming back?”

“Don’t play stupid, you know where she is. And don’t slouch, and don’t call her ‘mam’, we agreed.”

“When is mum-my com-ing home,” William chants, and then blows a sloppy raspberry. “This is stupid. Speaking like posh isn’t going to get us nowhere, Mike.”

“It might.” The defence of the philosophy is heated and desperate. “We’re clever. I’m going to get to Oxford, and they won’t know about any of this-” he gestures to the rat holes and the kerosene lamps that stink, and are used because the wiring’s bust and they can’t afford to repair it, and anyway the electric’s off and they daren’t ask the council for it.

William looks at his brother over his folded arms. He’d found shirts in the rooms upstairs, old ones, now rather out of style but Mike keeps them so carefully. He spends hours fussing over them, thinking about Oxford, insisting even though he’s only 12 and they don’t let 12 year-olds go to university. William half admires it and half can’t see the point anyway. They don’t even go to school. ‘Mummy’ teaches them, when she remembers. Mostly they teach themselves because there’s mouldering books in the top of the house, and a lot of ways to get hold of a library card.

“I’m hungry.”

“It’s beans or nothing.”

William pushes his chair back and drops to the floor. “I’m going up. I am re-tie-uh-ring to the draw-ing room.” He has some things tucked away in a cache in his den, pinched from town. Mike won’t approve; he’ll talk about ruining is future, but all William really cares about is ruining his appetite. He’s becoming vaguely aware that other people don’t live like this, but his ignorance makes understanding this fully an impossibility.

Mike trails him up the stairs, with the opened tin of beans, digging out of it with a fork. His trousers sag and he pauses to hitch them up, rearranging the turn ups and squeezing his fingers down the front creases. He puts them under the mattress every night, which is what passes for ironing in this house.

William pauses, on the stairs, as he always does, to look at the roster on the wall. Mam said it was a school, before, for rich boys. William would love to know what they ate. The kitchen is huge; it must have been more than just beans. Mike scrapes the fork around, getting sauce on his fingers.

“They wouldn’t eat from the can.”

“They would if there weren’t any plates,” Mike says, haughtily. He licks at the fork. “I wonder if we could contrive some plates.”

“Quicker to nick ‘em. Why’d they ‘ave stupid names?”

“They’re not stupid. That’s how they know.”

“Know what?”

“That they’re part of the elite. it’s just obvious to them, who is in and who isn’t.”

“Are we in?”

“Decidedly out,” Mike says, and pigs another forkful of beans to soothe the hurt of this thought. “We need better names. I often think this- I’ll look bloody silly going to an interview, ‘ello my name’s Mikey ‘olmes.”

“I want that one then,” William says, stretching on tiptoes to point at the wall.

“What one?”

“Sherlock.”

“That one? Why?”

“Sounds like a knife when you say it.”

“Sounds like spitting,” Mike grunts. He chases beans around the can, but his mind is still on the wall. “Sherlock Holmes. Sounds like a removals company. Maybe Sherlock W. Holmes. S. W. Holmes. That’s better. Authorial.”

“What’s awful-oriel?”

“I mean, like it should be on a book.”

William laughs, already bored. “You could be the other one there- Sherringford. Sherry Holmes!”

Mike scowls. “Not bleedin’ likely! No, i’d be more like-” he scans the wall hastily and ends up picking one closest to his name in his rush. “Mycroft.”

“Micro toff!” William crows and runs away, bare feet thumping on the tiles. Mike, out of sight, swigs the last of the beans from the can and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. The letters on the wall do nothing, cut there generations ago, immovable testament to a richer past.

‘Mycroft’ Mike reads, leaning up to trace the engraving with the tips of his fingers. He covers the surname and imagines that when he lifts his palm away it will say ‘Holmes’, but for now, covered, it could be Mycroft Anybody.

“Mycroft,” he says aloud. It sounds like ‘Mike’.

Mostly it sounds like potential.


	7. Your Thoughts and Mine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _PROMPT #176_  
>  BBC, Sherlock/John
> 
> _April Fool’s Crack Fic! John (being a doctor) gets free drug samples. He takes one meant to quickly get rid of a migraine. It has a surprising side effect-he can read minds! He spends the day beating Sherlock to the punch, etc. Maybe at the end of the day, he reads Sherlock’s mind and realizes he wants John as much as John wants him? Bonus fun: Sherlock catches on and has John use his new power against Mycroft!_

**Your Thoughts and Mine**

The headache begins as a halo. It makes the edges of the world throb and smells sharper. The lights become more candid, and then the pain kicks in.

“You look awful,” the nurse says, when he slips out for a quick break.

“Headache,” John says, “Bloody thing won’t shift. I’ll be fine,” he says. He has to be; he’s already the stand-by doctor, and whilst he could bow out if he wanted, it would leave the clinic in a pinch and he can’t make himself do that. This isn’t like he’s been called on a case; it’s just a headache. Nonetheless, when he stands up again, his whole brain seems to slop in one big wad of gelatinous pain.

“Christ,” John mutters through gritted teeth. “Aspirin…” He doesn’t have any in his bag, and he hasn’t time to walk to the pharmacy. He hurries around the room between patients and finds a box of sample drugs. He reads the ingredients and the slip that came with them; it’s an anti-depressant of some sort, but there’s a modest dose of pain killers in there as well.

‘So,’ John rationalises as his eyeballs seem to pulse in his head, ‘it levels out my mood for the next 24 hours and maybe blunts the edge of this till the end of my shift.’

It’s the lancing pain that goes through his temple that convinces him to take the risk. He pops three for the benefit of the painkillers.

It works surprisingly quickly. At first it’s as though a cloud has lowered over his head, leaving him careless and foggy. He processes a couple of general check ups in a daze. Then the sleepiness seems to clear and although the colours still seem overclocked, the pain has gone and he feels, more or less, alright other than the pinching feeling.

It doesn’t hurt, it’s just a strange pressure, right at the top of his nose and between the brows, as if someone had clamped a clothes peg there. He rubs the spot, but the sensation doesn’t go away.

“You’re looking a bit brighter,” the nurse comments as she comes in for some more gloves. “Feeling better?”

“Yes, actually,” John says and he is about to mention the pinch, when it seems to intensify to a pull. He looks at the nurse in surprise, lifting his hands to touch his brow, and then things go decidedly odd.

It’s only a series of impressions he gets. Predominantly a feeling of ‘What?’ and the rasp of a bra wire on the left hand side, and then, most disconcertingly, a glimpse of his own self, face white as salt, at his desk, in the process of raising his hands.

And then it’s gone.

“Are you alright?”

“Uh…” John says, at a loss for words. He looks at the nurse and she looks at him, and he realises that for the briefest of flashes, he had been her. Or fancied he’d been. “No,” John says after a moment, “I’m really feeling off-colour. Can you ask if anyone can cover my last few patients?”

___

It happens again on the bus on the way home. John is slumped in a seat, glazed out. His eyes watch the road slither by but he’s still thinking about the nurse. It had been so clear, that’s what gets him. The pinching feeling is still there, and as he thinks about it, if he tries, it seems like he can push it from a pinch to a tiny pull at will. He is idling over this when he feels it gently slip to the side and all at once, he is seeing the world as someone else.

Music in his ears; a lithe young body. The thumbs on his phone are black and move with practiced eased to the beat of the music, yet John gets the impression of not being in the mood for any of them. A name of a song evokes a memory of a night club, the same hands on the turn tables, a girl at the front pushing her face up to smile and mouth an unheard question. Her cleavage-

John is himself again, sweating, mouth gulping like a fishes. He stares at the back of the man’s head, sitting diagonally opposite and a few rows ahead, earphones on.

‘Baker Street’ says the bus, and John falls off of it, eyes wild.

He’d been in the other man’s head. Not possession; John had had no control over the thumbs, but he’d stepped in for a ride and seen everything he’d seen and been party to his memories right down to the appreciative twitch of the belly at the mental sight of those breasts.

‘I’m going mad,’ John thinks, and then, more accurately realises ‘It was those pills!’

It could happen again. He stops on the corner, propped up with one hand on the side of the news stand, and ‘feels’ at the pinch with his mind. It seems… more elastic. It stretches to a pull now almost at will.

‘Maybe I can control it.’ John thinks, and he walks home avoiding anyone’s eye, and willing the pinch to sit still. He scuttles into the house and shuts the door gratefully, Sherlock’s voice reverberates through the floor, and then someone else speaks and it’s evident that he’s with a client.

John climbs the stairs slowly. Maybe he could slip by and go up to his room and sleep this off, but…

…yet.

“John, there you are, come in here.”

John does so, cautiously. The client is a middle-aged man, impeccably dressed, with a calf-like face. “Nothing too exciting,” Sherlock comments on the man’s presence. John takes a seat next to Sherlock, and examines the client.

“Tell me about the morning, what did you do?”

“I got up,” The client says and, curious, John lets slip the elastic of his mind and is fascinated. The world looks different through his eyes, browner, and Sherlock less…Sherlock somehow. Not as beautiful, not as cheering. “I got up later than normal, around 8 or 8:30.”

John sees the memory of him moving in the dark, and blurts, “That’s a bloody lie!”

He jerks back to his own perception of the world. “He’s lying,” John says, in response to Sherlock’s surprised expression. “He got up earlier. Much earlier.”

The client gives a little throaty ‘uh’ of shock, and then looks nervous.

“He is lying,” Sherlock agrees, darkly pleased but also jealous. He throws John a suspicious look. “What time?”

“There’s a mistake, I don’t know what-”

“What time!” Sherlock barks.

“Around 4:30.”

“Why so early?” Sherlock says and John sees his eyes start to flicker from one part of the man to the next, reading, seeking, taking it all in. John jumps ahead of him, into the man’s mind.

They’ve got him nervous and he’s hastily rewriting his story, John realises. There’s a muddle of memory and fantasy, the two as alike as chalk and cheese. They feel different too. Suddenly, he understands and laughs aloud.

“What?” Sherlock asks.

John points at the client. “Do you buy your own clothes?” he asks.

“Of course.”

“Pick them out yourself?”

“Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“That’s a nice green tie,” John says. “Is it your favourite?”

“Uh,” The client glances at it. “Yes. Thank you. I’m quite fond of it…”

“Except it’s red and you’re colour blind.”

“Tha- oh.”

“John!” Sherlock says, wonderstruck. John floats on a glad little bubble of pride.

“This is a set up,” John says, pointing a finger at the man like a gun. “Bloke dresses as smart as that and doesn’t ask what colour his favourite tie is? I don’t think so. Say hello to Mycroft for us.”

Sherlock chokes. “Oh, no. No! Tell my brother, i’m not his damn system for training new spooks. Also, you failed dismally as even John saw through you. Get out.”

“Listen, it wasn’t my idea,” the client says, and he leaves post-haste, forgetting the coat that was part of his costume.

As soon as he’s gone, Sherlock rounds on John. “What tipped you off? What did you see?”

John laughs. “Ooh, well, that’d be telling.”

“Yes! Tell me! I missed it and you didn’t; you didn’t, John. What did you see? Was it the cuffs?”

“No,” John says, teasingly moving out of reach. Sherlock pursues him.

“The ring? The watch? The coat? Was there a label?”

“No!” John lets himself be cornered, still laughing. “I saw him getting out one of Mycroft’s cars,” he lies. “Around the corner, about… before he came in.”

Sherlock doubtless sees the lie and he looks puzzled for a moment, but then lets it go. He is delighted John has been so sly, in fact.

‘What does he see?’ John wonders. ‘How does he see the world? How does he see me?’

It’s almost unthinkingly that he lets the power lose, across the narrow space between them. Through Sherlock’s eyes he sees John Watson in technicolored detail; the way his hair has been rumpled from grasping at his temples, the fact that he didn’t clean his teeth after lunch as per usual, the colours of his irises. It is so profound that John needs a heartbeat longer to realise that Sherlock is not deducing him, but just looking. Thoughts scatter across the surface of Sherlock’s mind, small and undeveloped. They break the surface like sprats skimming the sea, chased by something deeper, and then that deeper thing crests up and surfaces.

It is a feeling without words. It is both familiar and regal, a long pure note, a single perfect blossom on a stem after a long winter. It takes John’s breath away to know that anyone can hold such a depth of affection for him. It seems to pour from Sherlock like syrup, outwardly just by the merest lift of his lips. That everyday ‘Really, John’ expression.

‘I didn’t know,’ John thinks helplessly, ‘I didn’t know that was what that meant.’

“John?”

“I didn’t know,” John is saying aloud, moved. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“John, what’s wrong?” the feeling has gone, replaced by the cold waters of panic. “What have you taken?”

“Pills,” John says, back in his own mind in a scrabbling rush, but he has misstepped somewhere and there’s a flash of pain and he’s sinking.

“John!”

“I’m ok,” John says, and passes out.

____

He comes to in Sherlock’s bed, tucked in under the covers, belt and shoes and pocket contents gone.

“Welcome back,” Sherlock says. He’s toying with something and when John’s vision clears enough to see, it is the empty packet of pills. “Given the things I get up to, you’d think you’d have had more sense.”

“Shut up,” John begs. The headache is back. Sherlock moves closer and slips the glass of water into his hand. “Throw those out. Flush them all,” John asks, watching Sherlock. He’s knows what the man is thinking - his curiosity. His need to experience anything first hand. The idea of Sherlock with his capabilities reading minds, is deeply worrying. He might not come back, John thinks.

“I have.”

“Have you? Really? Please, Sherlock, don’t take them. They’ll drive you mad.”

“Telepathy, John. The ability to read people from the inside. It’s… fascinating.” He’s touching John’s face and John sees him swallow, and it’s not the packet that John emptied he’s holding. It’s a second.

“Oh my God, Sherlock.”

“I thought I was obvious. You didn’t know?”

John shakes his head.

“I’m…” Sherlock’s voice slips to something more vulnerable. “Not ugly?”

“No,” John says, almost amused that this of all things is what Sherlock is concerned about.

“I’m not vain,” Sherlock answers, wounded, “I assumed you saw me as…just another man.”

John presses the space between Sherlock’s brows. “Come out of my mind,” he says, and he feels nothing but he sees it in Sherlock’s face when he obeys. “How was that?”

“You have a lot of emotions,” Sherlock reports. He rubs at his eyes. “And I’m getting a headache.”

“You are a headache,” John jokes. And a heartache. “And you’re not just another man.”

Sherlock looks at him as if to say, ‘Oh really, John’ and this time John feels it without the drug. He can see the pitter patter of Sherlock’s beating heart. He feels it too, when he squeezes Sherlock’s hand.

The packet in Sherlock’s other hand crinkles and they’re reminded of its existence. “What do you think would happen if we both took it at the same time?” Sherlock asks.

John plucks it from his fingers and drops it on the bedside table. “I think,” he says slowly, “I can think of better ways to connect with you.”


	8. The 221B Effect

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _notagarroter:_
> 
> _Imagine John finding out that Sherlock has had a series of flatmates/sidekicks before John, and every single one of them fell hopelessly in love with Sherlock Holmes. ___
> 
> Johnlockish

**The 211B Effect**

“Who’s this?” John asks. It is spring cleaning day in 221B, which is an arbitrary title as it is not spring, has lasted a week and the flat is more of a mess than ever.  
John turns over the photograph curiously; it is of Sherlock (looking disdainful) and a woman holding a tiny silver tool that she is mock-threatening him with. “It fell out from behind the bat.”

“Oh, that. That’s nothing,” Sherlock says, spidering over files and boxes to pluck it from John’s hands, except John sees him coming and whisks it out of reach. “It’s nothing. Bin fodder. Just throw it away.”

“But who is she?” John asks. “Was this a case?”

“Not quite,” Sherlock mutters.

“She’s pretty,” John comments. Sherlock makes an indignant throaty noise.

“Really, John.” John raises his eyebrows and Sherlock huffs and, flustered, says, “Really, John!” again.

“Did you have a thing with her?” John asks, incredulously. He looks at the photo again and on second thoughts, she’s not that pretty. Bit odd looking. Annoying.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Sherlock splutters, aggressively filing. “Go away and make tea.” John however, remains, the joke fading from his face.

“You actually did. Is this... your ex-girlfriend?”

Sherlock wishes he could bury his own head in one of the boxes, like an ostrich (propaganda-ishly speaking, anyway) and die. He wonders if the paper would actually suffocate him, or if he could somehow contrive sufficient weight that between the mass of files and the hard edge of the box it would break his neck cleanly, and this is such a nice novel idea that he almost distracts himself.

In the meantime, John has taken his silence for assent and is regarding the photo with a very funny look on his face. He puts it back, after a long moment, into the frame holding the bat and resumes dusting around the shelves.  
___

“You never said you’d won trophies,” John says, delighted. He has popped open a box from on top of one of the bookshelves and the contents gleam like a genie’s treasure. “And rosettes.”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, all but flying over the room to plunge his hands in. He is lit up with pleasure. “I thought these were lost-”

There are not many, but John suspects this is from a process of culling rather than a lack of success. Crinkled rosettes, the ribbon gone scratchy with age, unfold under his hands. “Dog shows?”

“I had a very good dog,” Sherlock says, smoothing the red tails with obvious tenderness.

“Fencing...” John says, pulling other bits and pieces out, “Rowing- I can’t even read this medal, it’s Chinese.”

“Japanese,” Sherlock corrects, without even looking. “That one’s not too special. I entered competitions as a measure of gauging my competence but it was never anything serious.”

“Still, though,” John says, impressed. He picks up the tiny fencing trophy and admires it. “We should put these somewhere we can see them,” he says, turning it over and then he pauses. There’s a scrawl in permanent marker on the base; difficult to see in black against the dark wood, but it is there, and obviously a man’s handwriting, and obvious in many other ways.

‘For the man with the biggest sword! VT x’ it reads.

John turns it back. It occurs to him that this one does not actually have Sherlock’s name on the front.

"Was fencing your favourite?" John asks in brittle tones. More so than he'd meant to and this surprises him as much as it does Sherlock.

Sherlock takes the trophy and reads the message with a schooled expressing but John thinks, incredibly, this is the first time Sherlock's actually seen the note. He clears his throat and tosses it casually back into the box. "Other people's stupidity knows no bounds." He flashes an insincere and sardonic smile.

"Right," says John, thinking of a list of names all starting with V. "Sure."

"And we're not putting my medals up unless we put yours up too," Sherlock adds in a successful bid to give John something else to fret over.  
____

Four days. The clutter in the flat slowly clears but not the two-name clutter in John's brain. One and a face, really. Who were these people? What happened?

The stories gnaw at him in their obviousness; they can only be one thing, yet it is a thing that is unthinkable when related to Sherlock.

Or is it?

Sherlock has made a lot of noise over the years about logic, aloof living etc etc but John had at least learnt that the nose only carries a modicum of substance. He's not a higher power and he hasn't transcended human life entirely, though perhaps not from lack of trying. But to have actually...

John can't imagine it and more to the point trying to imagine it makes him really quite cross and then once the indulgence of being cross fades, the guilt sneaks in.  
He has no business prying into something Sherlock is so clearly so private aboutand thus he cannot ask the man outright what it's all about. He does the next best thing and asks Mrs. Hudson instead. Mrs. Hudson gives him a biscuit, declares full ignorance and leaves John feeling both suspicious and foolish.

Molly goes one further in that she does not give him a biscuit and instead says something that verges on sharp before politely disapproving him from her sight.

'This is messed up,' John thinks, biscuitless in the cold outside of Bart's. 'I need to stop thinking about this or I'm going to go doolally.'

He tries. For the next few days he makes a very concerted effort to let it go, but the bat is still on the mantlepiece and the box is still on the shelf, constant reminders.  
Sherlock is well aware that John is going around the flat chewing his tongue like it’s a particularly angry bee in his mouth. The man’s jealousy is almost funny, or it would be if it weren’t for the fact that it’s also rather irritating. Sherlock is calculating how long before John caves in and just asks him outright, but bit by bit, John keeps his mouth shut and soldiers on and doesn’t ask, even though it is so plainly killing him not to.

In a way, Sherlock almost takes pleasure from it. He has secrets of course, more than John knows, but rarely something so small and silly and safe. As it goes on, Sherlock loses his irritation with John’s attitude towards the secrets, and instead becomes increasingly curious about how deep this goes. He teases him; nothing too overt. Straightening the bat and gently wiping the glass. Reenacting poses from fencing matches of yore, and then fabricating a sigh.

John reacts each time with as much stoicism as he can muster, and a face like someone’s jabbed him with a red hot needle.

It’s fascinating.

Sherlock winds him up until even he starts to wonder if this is verging on cruel, and John still hasn’t said anything. He’s come close a number of times, and each time, blundered away from it at the last moment. It’s the same way John has never actually asked him about his drug abuse- as much as he needed to know as a doctor, but not the details. Sherlock hadn’t wanted to share them, and John had never abused that need for privacy. He suspects John has asked Mycroft, or more likely Mycroft went telling tales, but that’s different. Sherlock doesn’t care what the rest say, it’s the awkwardness of making him tell it so personally that matters.

Finally, Sherlock puts and end to it. He waits until John’s around and then picks the photo out of the back of the bat frame and drops it into the waste paper basket. John stares.

“But why?”

“Why not?” Sherlock asks, surprised.

“You can’t just throw that out,” John says, hurrying to fetch it.

“Why? It’s bothering me. It doesn’t mean anything. I’d forgotten it was there.”

John can’t explain its importance. It’s something in the middle of a knot of feeling, and if Sherlock lacks it, John can’t help but feel it on his behalf. If anything, it’s just proof.

“She must have liked you,” John argues.

“Bah,” Sherlock manages.

“Sometimes people do like you, Sherlock.”

“That wasn’t-” Sherlock stops. A bit more than he intended to let slip, but it’s slipped now and while he thinks he could probably disorientate John’s memories of the last few seconds with a hefty chop to the back of the head, John is facing him and out of arm’s reach and it’s too late, even if he could stoop so low.

“Did she make the bat?”

“And the skull,” Sherlock says, and then confesses, “I like my skull.”

A smile tugs at John’s mouth. “But not her?” There’s an edge to his tone that says ‘please say no’.

Instead Sherlock shrugs. “I held no particular feelings one way or the other. She was a tolerable housemate until she became weird.”

“Weird?”

“Emotional. irrational. Disappointed, maybe, i don’t know- annoying. I left.”

“Because she liked you?”

“They all like me!” Sherlock says exasperated. “Her, Victor, Katsuaki-”

“Who?”

“Oh er, few months in Japan in a dojo, we were roommates- it doesn’t matter, the point is, they all... ‘liked me’.”

John is thinking. He is thinking ‘I can hear quotation marks around “liked me” but is the emphasis on “liked” or “me”?’ One or the other or both, then, is a lie. John explores a back molar with his tongue unconsciously, and then boils it down to the following, “So...all your previous um... they fell in love with you?”

“I didn’t encourage it!” Sherlock snaps. “If anything the opposite.”

“All of them?”

Sherlock’s gaze slips away. “Most.” He twiddles his fingers together. “Some did actually just hate me. Things in the fridge... you know.”

“Right,” John says, looking at the photo again. He folds it in half and returns it to the bin. “So just most of them then. Bit of a pattern. They’d start getting... sentimental and you’d move out.”

Or get hospitalised, or Mycroft would interfere and he’d end up in another circular family row, or something else. Sherlock opts for a simple ‘yes’ rather than divulge this.

“And you didn’t like the attention?” John says, half incredulous.

Sherlock grunts and throws himself into his armchair. John stands there a moment longer, and then when Sherlock picks up a magazine, takes that as written that the conversation is now over until next time.

“You know,” Sherlock says, just as John’s turning away. “As tiresome as you can be, you have one big thing in your favour.”

John struggles not to let his brain go somewhere filthy and instead says “Oh?”

“You don’t try and recreate me in your own image.”

“I write the blog,” John argues, despite himself. “You moan all the time about how I misrepresent you.”

“But you know it’s not true,” Sherlock says from behind the magazine. Then, quickly, “I’ll have coffee thanks.” 

“I- uh. Fine.” John gives up and heads to the kitchen, taking refuge behind the table. The rush of water from the tap obscures his thoughts, but the loudest of them can’t be helped. ‘Most?’ John thinks, settling the kettle onto it’s stand. ‘You’re a bloody idiot.’ 

Not as few as ‘most’, John thinks. 

There’s at least one more. 


	9. Goose in the Mist

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Responding to a prompt unwittingly but kindly provided by Jupitereyed on Tumblr. The original can be viewed [ here ](https://odamakilock.tumblr.com/post/165666167124/jupitereyed-really-try-to-imagine-john-and)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> John + Sherlock  
> First time meeting  
> Gen

It’s one of those sharp mornings, half-past back-to-school and the rain has cleared though the weather has not. On Baker Street the lamps are lit even though the sun is up, and the usual scurry of the city has subtly altered to a busy longing to simply be somewhere other than October. 

In Regent’s Park, the herons croak, bagged up on their spindly legs, and turn bright coral eyes at John as he passes. They stand out silver against the reeds on the river, which are brown now and reddening as they die. The sky is an upturned bowl of milk and John provides more clouds himself, puffing as he walks towards a horizon that is misted out of view.

Cold air feels cleaner after the fuming heat of summer. John marches to no end, other than to feel the promise of frost against his cheeks and the kiss of warmth that wells up from the collar of his jacket. 

In the park garden, rudbekia and asters jostle side by side, shouting colour; brash and hearty fog lights. Autumn crocus, begonia, russety chrysanthemums. John has forgotten their names. He turns out up to the bushy corner of the Outer Circle, where the knee high fences peter out and the shrubs spring up as full-grown trees to blot out the sky. 

Under their crowns, the grass is patched and soft and brown. The wind pushes leaves from the branches in a soft rain. John slows, turning up the leaves with the toe of his boot. The road, not far beyond the fog is nothing more than a watery rush of noise. 

A small animal nearby patters through the leaves. Then all at once it freezes and with a burst, it is gone. Footsteps. John looks up ahead. 

The man runs into sight, head craned up towards the tops of the trees, his face pale against the dark shape of his coat. Like John, he is wearing leather gloves and shoes not really meant for walking in. 

He pivots, coat-tails swirling, arms out like a dancer for balance. He turns, gaze still tracking something unseen above them, and then he stops dead at the sight of John, his mouth opening softly in surprise.

John raises both his hands to shoulder height to show that he is harmless. Smoke crowds out of the stranger’s mouth into the chilly air. The high bones of his cheeks are pinched red, his hair a tousled mess. 

In the silence of the woods, the man leans towards John conspiratorially and whispers, “Have you seen a bird?” 

John shakes his head. 

“A goose. Nearly had him by the pond, but he took off.” 

“No, nothing,” John whispers back. The man steps closer, examining the trees again, stopping just short of blundering into John. Without thinking, John reaches out and brushes the leaves from the man’s front. 

“I- sorry, it was on you.” 

“Not at all,” the man says, equally surprised. He tugs on one ear, coming over bashful and then turns his collar up to frame his face. “Are you busy?” 

“No.” John shakes his head, nearly smiling. “No, I’m all yours.” 

The wind pushes another shower of leaves down on them, tawny brown and gold. John laughs at the strangeness of it all. “John Watson,” he says, holding out a hand. 

“Goose!” says the other, taking it and pulling, pointing over John’s shoulder. John turns, stumbles and breaks into a run beside him. The bird ahead honks, and blunders off into the fog with a crack of wings. 

Hand in hand, they vanish after it.


	10. AnimalCam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picture prompt: @toucanfruitmachine wrote: Dear Oda, if you’re still after challenges: (&assuming the gif sends- I am Tumblr illiterate) John coming home to this scene, with Mycroft and Sherlock staring intently at the animals. Mycroft looks up and declares that it’s for a case…

There are at least 6 things that make John instantly suspicious as soon as he gets home. Firstly, it’s quiet. Not quiet in the ‘Sherlock is asleep’ or ‘Sherlock is out’ kind of way. It is quiet in the ‘Sherlock is _up to something’_ kind of way. 

This is further compounded by the wet umbrella (Sherlock’s not the only resident of 221B who can do deductions, thanks very much, mate) in the hall umbrella stand. Sherlock + Mycroft x silence… Never a particularly good equation, that one. 

The next suspicious thing is that the door to the flat is nearly shut. It’s never shut if Sherlock’s in. He leaves it open because he, quote-unquote, believes in free-range housekeepers. To whit, Mrs. Hudson has a tendency to drift upstairs when she gets bored and then can’t help herself and some dusting or hoovering usually gets done. 

The forth suspicious thing is the same as the first. It’s quiet. Mycroft is in a closed room with his brother and John can’t hear any arguing. Maybe, he wonders, they’ve actually throttled each other this time. 

The fifth and sixth suspicious things become apparent as soon as he lays a palm to the door and slowly swings it open. To begin with, both Mycroft and Sherlock are hunched over Sherlock’s laptop, engrossed, which leads to the last thing, which is that they are so engrossed that they do not notice John approaching them until his shadow falls across the screen.

Then they both jump. 

“John,” Sherlock splutters, pawing one hand in the direction of the screen to hide the evidence and not even getting that far. “You’re home early.”

“I’m an hour late, thanks,” John corrects. He is trying not to smile. “Dear-o, me.” He tuts. “Who did it then? Bambi or Thumper?” 

“It’s for a case,” Mycroft says, as pompously as he can manage given that he’s a grown man just caught being soppy over baby animal videos. “One of them has swallowed a priceless sapphire. We’re deducing which.” 

John chuckles and pats both their shoulders. 

“Gosh, really? How long’s that taken you? An hour? Two? Getting slow are you?” 

“John, please. This is absolutely legitimate case work.” Sherlock straightens the screen. “Judging from the lower mandible of the female skunk-” 

John tips his head back and roars with laughter. 

“ _I’ve_  already deduced it,” Mycroft says pettishly, fiddling with his cuffs. “I’m just humouring Sherlock.” 

“ _ **I’ve**  _already deduced it!” Sherlock snaps back. “ _I’m_  just humouring you.” His anger flutters and dies when John rubs the top of his head. 

“You know,” John says quietly, “There’s a website with nothing but live videos of baby rescue animals right?” 

Both of them stare at him. 

“It’s true. Ask Molly.” 

John leaves them sitting very still at the laptop, and goes to take three mugs from the cupboard and put the kettle on. Suspiciously, it is very quiet behind him. Then there is a little flurry of annoyed whispering, and then Sherlock clears his throat.

“Molly, hello,” John hears him say, fake brightness and awkward. “Yes. I’m on a case-” 

John grins, and takes a forth mug from the cupboard. 


	11. You've Got Googley Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Missmuffin221 asked: Johnlock. 'Why are there googly eyes on all the suspects pictures?'

“Why are there plastic eyes on all the suspects’ pictures?” Sherlock asks. He is standing in the door of John’s bedroom, holding the frame and scowling. John puts down his book.

“There are googly eyes on all the suspects’ pictures,” John explains, “Because Mrs. Hudson found a whole bag of googly eyes in her sewing basket, and let me have them.” 

“To annoy me?” 

John considers. “Yep.” 

“They won’t come off the photos!” 

“Good. Do you know how off-putting it is having 120 different potential serial killers on the wall across half the house. In the bathroom, Sherlock. The bathroom.” 

“The bathroom helps me think!” 

“I have to use the bathroom too.” 

“John!” Sherlock is perilously close to stamping a foot. “This is a case!” 

“Well it’s a boring case, you’ve been at it for over a week already.” John dumps the book to one side and gets up from his bed. “You’ve not even left the flat. This is an ash experiment level of case, and you know it.”

“You like my ash experiments.” 

“No,” John says patiently, “I don’t. You’re just a passionate nerd about them, and I find that endearing.” 

Sherlock reels under the revelation that John does not care about ash or the categorising thereof. “John, I’m shocked at you. And you’ve googly eyed my evidence!”

“Well…” John says.  He clears his throat. “It is a bit funny though, isn’t it?”

“Hm,” Sherlock says, eyeing him narrowly. He is replying the conversation in his head and on a second run though, he picks up what he missed. He supposes, with 120 suspects and a lot of the leg-work actually being head-work, John has had next to nothing to do on this case. And he supposes, given the complexity of the whole thing, he’s spend probably more time than intended staring at other people’s photographs. 

“Did I eat breakfast this morning?” 

“You had some toast. Not at the table,” John adds, meaningfully. 

“Ah,” says Sherlock, coming to a conclusion. Meals consumed with one hand, while working through files with the other. Sleeping on the sofa. Conversation has been limited or non-existent.  “Oh… John…I apologise for making you jealous.” 

“I’m not jealous!” John retorts. 

“Neglected then.” 

“Oh, come on, I’m not a bloody houseplant.” 

“John,” Sherlock says, leaning on the doorframe and turning languid. “Do you miss me and my attentions?”

“You are such an arse,” John says, with the pinkness around the back of the neck that says his tone does not match his thoughts, although Sherlock is willing to bet that John’s thoughts rattle around the concept of ‘arse’ nonetheless. “Can you just hurry up and solve this bloody case?”  

“John,” Sherlock purrs. “John.” 

“What?” 

“John.” He crooks a finger and John shuffles closer. 

“What?” 

“You are a very, very silly man.” 

“Hm. Says this idiot,” John grouses, even as his hands wander around Sherlock’s waist. Sherlock lets his arms slide over John’s shoulders. 

“Very silly,” Sherlock repeats, soberly. “There are ways of getting my interest, you know.” 

John’s hand squeezes. 

“Yes, that’s one of them.” Sherlock clears his throat, eyes rolling towards the ceiling. John chuckles. 

“Right then. well, as I’ve got your attention, so to speak.” 

“So to speak.”

“How about budging in a bit so I can shut the door?” 

“Willing to oblige,” Sherlock says, and the door closes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Here's also the best song I know about Googly Eyes](https://youtu.be/a1eZXClDGQ0)


End file.
